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Since I’ve taken the day off, I decided to pop over to Twitter to see if David Hogg and his anti-gun activism was still making any noise. And it is… although it’s become even more divisive, and is making even less sense. His current “thing” is to include “THE YOUNG PEOPLE WILL WIN” on almost everything that he posts. 😐 I suppose that’s an attempt to light a fire under their asses and make them feel special, but it’s also a great way to alienate everyone else from your cause. 🤨 (I often wonder if the other kids / leaders in their movement wish they had never included him, due to the drama he causes.)

Young people (18-25), just as with any demographic, do not all vote the same way. The majority of them don’t even vote at all. But the new mantra isn’t aimed at people who prefer to actually think about things. The mantra is aimed at idiots, and their replies don’t disappoint. 😏 I can’t tell you how many older Americans that I’ve seen posting replies about how their generation has let the youth down, how sorry they are for not creating a better world, how the young people are our only hope, and other similar bits of nonsense. 😣 These “self-hating adults (apologists)” who can’t wait to post and “confess” on the behalf of all adults, how awful “grown-ups” are… and ironically it’s usually the older white men who can’t stop talking about how older white men have fucked everything up. 😠 It’s truly bizarre.

In attempts to stay relevant (since he’s rarely able to get on TV anymore) Hogg will make often-incoherent posts about various Senate or House candidates and elections, which then get retweeted by his followers – without them even noticing when the posts make little to no sense. 🙄 Invariably there will be adults responding to those posts by asking Hogg how they should vote in this or that election. 😧 Yeah, don’t do any research on your own, because it’s always better to get your election advice from someone who uses words such as “dissagree, violance, and colledge” and still struggles with the whole “there / their / they’re” thing.

(As you can tell from the way they speak, these are obviously some top-notch interviewers)

I know, this whole post may seem petty or something that I shouldn’t even concern myself with… but it’s really just touching on the larger problem of how much “weaponized ignorance / stupidity” a person will be exposed to online, and especially on Twitter. 😒 It’s like the less sure a person is about what they’re saying, the more passionately they will say it, and the more angrily they will defend it.

It’s okay though, I’m sure “the young people” will save us all from all of that as well. 🙄🤦🏻‍♂️

Having some difficulty getting moving today. Just taking it easy and letting it come to me. I’ve already got a few things that I know I want to get done later today, and I think once the sun is completely down it will get easier.

Wandered around on Twitter for a bit when I woke up, and noticed that I got a reply that surprised me on a tweet I had made last night. It’s always a bit surreal when someone famous replies to or likes one of your tweets, but even more so when it’s a celebrity that you’ve always liked. I mean, who would think that I’d get a reply from Piper Perabo the other day when asking about a House Resolution / Senate Bill regarding gun control. I try not to internally fanboy about it too much, remembering that they’re just normal folks like the rest of us.

I’ve been making a ton of progress with my new police scanner. I’ll have to maybe put some screenshots of the various frequencies I’ve got saved in various “favorites” files for it to use. I mean, it can search whatever you want based on your zip code, but it’s always better to customize some lists to get exactly what you’re looking for at any given moment. And it has a recording features which not only names the WAV files according to the department / system / channel it was recorded from, but when it records – it also skips the “dead air” bits… resulting in a complete recording, but somewhat time compressed.

Alright, I’m gonna hop off here and see if I can make something of this day…

EDIT: Increased the font size for the blog entries. I know I ramble, and small text would kind of hide that “feature” of my writing, but it’s just easier on the eyes and also helps my various emoji be recognizable for what they are pretty much.

I’ve found myself getting lost in “abandoned buildings” videos on YouTube over the past week or two… and more specifically in the ones where everything was just left behind, as if someone got up and went to work one day and just never came home again. 😯 I’m not sure why it fascinates me so much. It might be because, like Mom, I can look at any old home and imagine what life it used to hold. ☺ Families, holidays, birthdays, ups, downs, day-to-day boring life, just everything…

I think the saddest part about these videos though is thinking about each of the individual items that people come across. Because you have to think… each item had a purpose, a reasonat some point. 🤔 Some more sentimental than others, but yeah… whether it’s old photos, stuffed animals, dolls, toy cars, nick knacks, CDs or cassettes, maybe even VHS or 8mm movie reels… every one of those things has a story behind it, but now those things are forgotten by the world, dissolving to time. 😔

I think that I may relate a little too much to some of these videos. 😏 Granted, it’s only because of the story that I create in my mind, but when you see an old house that is basically untouched – you sort of suspect that whoever lived there last was likely old and alone, with no kids to gift his possessions to, so for whatever reason the property just sits. That’s why exploring feels important to me, so even when someone is gone and forgotten by time, someone else comes along and does a great documentary and shares it on YouTube for those people and memories to live on.

It actually creates a moral dilemma for me though. 😒 The “rules” of urban explorers dictate that you take pictures, you take video, but you never take stuff. In theory I agree, because it still does belong to someone else, whoever that person may be… but I struggle with that rule because of the asshats that inevitably discover and vandalize such places. There’s just a large segment of the human population that would rather destroy the things that they find rather than appreciate them for what they are and what they were.

Most of the time it’s stuff that I wouldn’t even want for myself. Just stuff that deserves a better fate than to be overtaken by weather and nature and eventually destroyed. 😟 Antiques, porcelain dolls, old books, and other vintage items… it would be so hard to not collect them up just to donate them away, knowing that they’d then live on in the hands of someone that appreciated them. But maybe that’s not meant to be their fate. Maybe, sometimes, our stuff is only meant to live as long as we do, and suffer the same fate once we’re gone. I dunno… I’ll have to work this one around in my head a while.

PS: Having watched enough videos to say this, I think that there’s a lot of folks who don’t know the difference between “abandoned” and “unused” when it comes to the buildings they come across. For example, if you find an office complex that hasn’t been operating for six months, going inside and going “Wow! Look at all this office stuff left behind!” I feel like you’re more “breaking and entering” rather than exploring something that’s truly been abandoned. I guess this hobby has lots of moral quandaries.

Well, here’s the finished product. I’m pleased with it… all of the added touches are there to be seen – it’s just a shame that animation is sort of an afterthought with this modeling program, so the camera movements are a bit jerky and unnatural looking. But for anyone who had visited this house prior to me moving in, I think you’ll agree that it’s pretty faithful to the original… particularly the living room. 🙂

Changed lamp on round table and square coffee table changed to oval in living room

End table lamps changed / now functioning, cuckoo clock now present in living room

Console record player under big mirror changed, vase/flower and newspaper added

In each room I also tweaked all sorts of things when it comes to object shading, colors, levels of reflection (matte/glossy), and lighting levels (spot/ambient) in a way that I think makes the whole thing look slightly closer to realistic and accurate to the way things were here in the past. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things that I changed or adjusted, but yeah… there ya go. 😏

Oh, and I know – both times that I’ve created one of these animations, it’s been done where the house is assumed to be lit by dawn / pre-dawn light. I do that because I prefer to see how the internal man-made illumination sources and shadows are handled by the program, although I suppose one day I could render it out in broad daylight with fake ceiling lights (just a source light w/no visible fixtures) being activated in every room. 🤷🏻‍♂️

It’s 2a and I should be sleeping, but it’s my fault for making myself feel like shit. 😒 I mean, there really wasn’t a good second option – as not helping Cassi move would have ended up with them possibly not moving. Heh… that’s the problem with those of us who maintain as few friendships as possible – when it comes time for things like this, normal people have a crapload of acquaintances that will come and move your shit for some pizza and beer. Meh, more on that later maybe… but I wouldn’t have done things differently.

I’m just making an entry now because I can. Because I’ve got my laptop back. See, now and then I’ve been updating the 3D objects and properties in the modeled version of my grandparents’ house as it used to be – so it was time to render another animation, which takes forever and a day on a meager ol’ laptop like the one I’ve got. I mean, it’s a good laptop, it’s just that no personal systems are really meant for serious 3D rendering.

But yeah, the animation finished rendering, I’m currently uploading it to YouTube for enhancements, and then I’m going to download it again to do any adjusting that I have to do with playback speed. 🤓 It’s funny, like I was telling Genesee – 9 out of 10 people that watch the old rendering followed by the new one, they’re likely going to notice very little change. And I suppose that’s because there is little change… but yeah, I figured it was enhanced enough that it was worth the processing time. It’ll be up here in the blog once I’m done screwing with it. (Damn, now that I think about it, I haven’t actually watched the resulting video – so I don’t even know for sure if it was a success.)

I don’t know if I’m going to have to deal with that nonsense every thirty days, but at least yesterday I was finally able to get the situation resolved. 😒 Everything ended up getting approved and paid for (after I got a refund for what I paid the day before) by the workers comp insurance. Everyone that I spoke to on the phone was super nice and helpful, which was almost disappointing – since I was really needing to shout at some people by that point. 😐 But yeah, it’s all settled for this month…

Now I’m sitting here in the house, living room floor covered with cat hair, wondering when my new vacuum cleaner is finally going to ship from Amazon. 🤨 I got it as part of a Black Friday / Cyber Monday/Week sale, but it wasn’t in stock at the moment and was advertised that it would ship in about a week. (It’s been about a week.) Meh… at least I don’t have any company coming over to see my furry carpet. 🙄

Outside, nothing has changed. It’s cold now, so stuff has stopped growing, but I never did get around to hiring someone to trim back all the hedges and other shit around the yard. 🙁 It doesn’t look that bad, but it stays in the back of my mind that it needs tended to. 😒 That’ll probably be a “spring thing” to deal with before the lawn even requires mowing for the first time.

This house. I really don’t know what I want to do about it. It’s way too much house for one person, but it’s never been lived in by anyone other than a Batina. Grandparents, Dad, Aunt C, and now me. 😳 Lots of memories here, both good and bad… and it will/would be hard to not feel a little bit guilty about selling it and moving somewhere else. 😟 It shouldn’t be that way, but you know me – and how much memories / history / nostalgia / etc plays into my life. Plus, it’s the last thing that acts as “established Batina history/presence” and man would it feel weird to not have it around anymore to keep me feeling connected to my past. Hard to explain… but anyway…

Thankfully, now that I have all of my required meds in my system I’m feeling pretty good. Neck is still feeling more funky than it has in a long time, but I’m trying not to complain. I’m still waiting to see if the MRI is approved… and I’m hoping that if it’s not, that maybe I can use my Medicare insurance to cover most of it. Because I’m not doing it just to do it… something feels different, not good, and it’s making me a bit anxious. 😬 It’s been a decade since my cervical fusion surgery, so I don’t think it’s that far fetched to think that things may have changed in there since then.

While I was cleaning this afternoon I came across my Windows 10 tablet, which I hadn’t used in many months. So I figured I’d plug it in, charge it up, and then download whatever updates it asked for. 🤓 It was a solid plan on paper, but within a few minutes of connecting the power I began to smell the familiar aroma of burning electronic components. 😳 I’m glad that what I was working on kept me in the same room, otherwise it’s hard to tell what might have happened.

I’m pleased with the amount of stuff that I got done today though. The living room is clean, the last little bit of laundry is clean and waiting for me to fold it, and then I sorted through some more stuff and added to the “sale/auction” boxes stacked in the extra bedroom. 😎 I did it all at a very “cautious” pace though… ‘cuz my brain is still being unpredictable, and I didn’t wanna push my luck too much. 😐

The accidental hour-long nap that I took this afternoon is gonna fuck me though. 😒 Not that I had a healthy/normal sleep schedule going on yet anyway, but yeah… I know I’ve got a few hours before I’m gonna even possibly feel sleepy. Guess that means I won’t have an excuse to not fold all these clothes before I sack out, eh?